Manor House, Upper Slaughter

The Manor House at Upper Slaughter is a gabled Cotswold stone house of the late sixteenth century, built over a vaulted basement that may be a century older, with a two-storey porch of the early seventeenth century covered in carved decoration. It is listed Grade I and is a private home.

History

The Victoria County History puts most of the house in the late sixteenth century, incorporating a fifteenth-century basement with a stone groined roof, and dates the porch to the early seventeenth century; Historic England's listing dates the house itself to the early seventeenth century, possibly round older work. It was the house of the Slaughter family, who held the manor until William Slaughter died in 1741.

Decline and revival

By 1742 the house was in disrepair and described as a farmhouse. Later owners of the manor included Mary Dodwell and James Dutton, Lord Sherborne, who bought it in 1809. In 1852 the house was separated from the manorial estate, and from that year the Witts family, rectors of the parish, were lords of the manor. It was restored in the late nineteenth century as part of the Brassey family's Copse Hill estate, and in 1913 a larger matching extension added a fourth gable to the west front. It left the Copse Hill estate in 1913.

What to look for

The house is L-shaped, of coursed rubble under Cotswold stone roofs, and rises from two and a half to three and a half storeys as the ground falls, with four groups of diagonal chimneys and gabled fronts of mullioned and transomed windows. The porch is its showpiece:

• An arched doorway between Doric pilasters, with Ionic pilasters to the room above
• An armorial cartouche, and a sunburst panel in the parapet
• Carved ornament all over, the porch, in the listing's words, awash with fretwork decoration

Inside, the listing singles out the vaulted basement room, with flat ribs and stumpy colonnettes, which looks almost fifteenth century and whose first purpose is hard to explain.

Visiting

The Manor House is a private home and is not open. It can be seen from the lane at the south end of the village; please respect the owners' privacy and do not go up the drive.

Getting there

Upper Slaughter is reached by lanes about a mile upstream of Lower Slaughter, north-west of Bourton-on-the-Water. There is no public car park and no public toilets in the village; walkers usually park in Lower Slaughter and come up the Wardens' Way. No timed bus calls, but the Robin, a minibus you book ahead, serves the village. The walk from Lower Slaughter, the Bourton, Upper and Lower Slaughter walk and the Bourton, the Slaughters and Naunton walk come through the village close to the house.

Nearby

St Peter's Church, open every day, and the castle mound are a few minutes' walk north. Lords of the Manor, the hotel in the Witts family's former home, is in the village. Down the valley, Lower Slaughter has its own manor house, now the Slaughters Manor House hotel, as well as St Mary's Church, the Old Mill and the Slaughters Country Inn.